


The Place We Call Home

by HomuraBakura



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V
Genre: Fluff, Home, M/M, Post-Series, Reluctant friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-09
Updated: 2017-02-09
Packaged: 2018-09-23 04:14:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9640286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HomuraBakura/pseuds/HomuraBakura
Summary: Shun doesn't have any idea what Shiunin Sora is doing sleeping on a bench in the middle of Heartland, but maybe...maybe there's a little more hidden behind Sora's scowl and sass than Sora wants him to realize.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a late birthday present for my dear friend precioussorakaibashun, I guess it's not super shippy?? but at least you get to see them bantering a bit haha :'D I hope you had a great birthday and I hope you like this!!

Shun was so focused on getting home with the ingredients for dinner that his gaze almost glanced right over the shape sprawled over the bench, at least until he caught the hint of cotton-candy blue hair and realized wait, he _knew_ that lump.

A swear of disbelief at his blatant lounging started to form on Shun's lips as he stalked across the sidewalk to the bench, shifting the two bags into the crook of his elbow, ready to poke the little former Academia agent hard in the ribs when...wait...was the kid _asleep_? Here?

It was chilly day in Heartland City, and Shun appeared to be the only one on the sidewalk who had noticed, or perhaps cared, that Shiunin Sora was asleep on a bench at the edge of Heartland Park, just under the shadow of Heartland Tower. Shun's breath curled up through the air as he considered the shape of the young boy there, wondering if anyone else had noticed he was here—if anyone else had recognized him at all. After all, Sora hadn't participated in the actual invasion of XYZ...but perhaps they remembered him from the scattered memories of the time when the dimensions had fallen apart, and Sora had tried to duel against the demon duelist Yuya had become alongside Edo Phoenix.

Shun hesitated, one hand hovering in perfect position to poke him and wake him up, but something holding him back. He looked...weirdly peaceful. Shiunin Sora lay across the bench as though it were a bed, one arm flung over his forehead and the other across his chest. His plain black jacket looked rumpled, and there was a hole in the jeans that were clearly a size too big for him and cinched against his waist with a thin belt. He looked a little odd without the old Academia jacket that Shun had first known him in—he also looked...taller, Shun thought. It was hard to tell since the kid was just lying there, but Shun supposed it had been almost six months since he had seen hide or hair of the little Fusion duelist. If he stood up, Shun thought with some surprise that Sora's eyes might reach his shoulders now. He had sprung up like a goddamn weed.

But what was he doing sleeping _here_ , on a park bench in the middle of Heartland? What kind of stupid shit was he up to, coming _here_ to _Shun's_ dimension to take a nap on a bench?? Why wasn't he back in Fusion, where the rest of them had gone after finishing helping with the restoration project?

Another wave of irritation washed over Shun, and he finally poked Sora in the ribs.

Sora gasped, shooting upwards out of sleep so quickly that his head almost knocked Shun in the head. Faster than Shun could blink, the boy had a pair of _scissors_ gripped in one hand like a knife, his bright green eyes wide with a surprising panic. Shun actually felt a stab of guilt at how frightened Sora looked at being woken up. That disappeared quickly when Sora's face changed from surprise to a scowl.

“Oh, it's you,” he said.

The scissors disappeared somewhere into his sleeve and Shun didn't want to know why he still carried shit like that.

“Don't sound so irritated,” Shun said, his own voice vibrating with his own irritation. “You're the one skulking around in my city.”

“Sleeping equals skulking now? I guess leaps are comprehension are natural for a bird brain.”

Shun's lip curled and Sora actually grinned as though pleased with himself for getting a reaction.

The boy swung his legs around so that he was sitting upright on the bench, his feet on the ground, and stretched. His hair was sort of falling out of his ponytail, and he gathered it up back behind him again, retying it off.

“What are you doing here?” Shun asked finally, folding his arms. He knew that Sora was just waiting for him to ask, but they weren't going to get anywhere until he did.

“Wouldn't you like to know,” Sora said, rolling his eyes.

He finished tying off his ponytail again and then tugged on his jacket, patting off any dust that had collected on him while he slept. He looked up slowly, as though pretending he didn't know Shun was glaring at him.

“What? Not allowed to take a nap?”

“Why are you in this dimension?” Shun said.

“I felt like it.”

“That's not an answer.”

“Don't you have somewhere else to sleep? Somewhere more comfortable?”

Sora put a hand to his cheek and made a soft “aw” sound.

“Wow, you actually care about me being comfortable while I sleep? How sweet of you~”

“Shut the fuck up.”

Sora just grinned, his tongue poking out between his teeth. Shun wondered if the kid was keeping score of how many times he managed to ruffle Shun's feathers. He probably was.

“Look,” Shun said, trying to stay calm and serious. “It's not like it's safe for someone to be sleeping out in the open—and if you hadn't noticed, it's cold out.”

“I have a coat.”

Shun gave the jacket only a cursory glance, and knew it wasn't even half warm enough for Sora to be out here. He felt a brief urge to take his own heavy coat off and drape it over Sora, like he was one of the kids at the Clover Duel School who had forgotten their coat at the bus stop. He didn't act on it.

“Weren't you staying in Fusion?”

“Don't have a lot of friends in Academia anymore, even after we switched sides.”

“Then there must be _someone_ you could have been staying with, instead of sleeping out here in the elements.”

Sora just smiled wryly at him.

“Stop pretending like you care,” he said, softly.

Shun opened his mouth again to keep prodding at Sora, to ask him what the hell he was doing sleeping here when there were places he could be, when he caught the barest hint of the hollowness at the back of Sora's eyes. Hollowness he was trying to hide.

“...you really don't have any place to stay,” he said. “Or—would I be right if I said you don't have any place you feel safe staying?”

Sora rolled his eyes.

“I'm not stupid,” Sora said. “I feel safe wherever I want to. Didn't you see my scissors? If you had been anyone else I could have killed you.”

It dawned very slowly on Shun.

“You ran away from Standard. That's where you were staying. With Yuya and the others.”

“You don't know that, stop making stupid assumptions, bird brain.”

Shun scowled. He reached out to grip Sora's shoulders and make the boy look at him. Sora actually looked shocked when he met Shun's eyes, as though he could sense the intensity that Shun felt.

“Tell me the truth, Shiunin,” he said. “It's the least you owe me after all that happened.”

Sora briefly winced, and then he looked like he might start cussing Shun out.

But then his face slowly fell, and his eyes slid off of Shun's and down to the ground.

“Yuya and Yoko don't know I left yet,” he said. “They're used to me disappearing a lot. Not sure I'm going back.”

“Why not?”

Sora shrugged off Shun's grip on his shoulders.

“I don't know what home feels like,” he said, his voice going quieter, as though he could say it without Shun hearing it. “It doesn't...feel right.”

Shun stayed where he was over Sora, despite his grip being lost.

 _He's taller, but he's still small,_ Shun thought. _He still hasn't put much weight on, either_.

The panic that had fluttered over his eyes when he was woken up, and the way that he jumped for a weapon immediately. The fact that he was sleeping out here on a cold bench instead of in the warm bed that people were offering to him because he didn't know what normal was and a real home felt—wrong, to him.

When the war was over, Sora hadn't had a home to go back to. The home that was given to him...didn't feel right.

Shun thought about how twitchy he had been feeling lately—the way that Ruri's boots in the kitchen made him jump sometimes, or just sitting on the couch made him think for a moment that he must be dreaming because there was no way he could be this warm and comfortable. Nothing felt right anymore. Sometimes, it was hard to pretend it did.

He wondered if Sora had _ever_ felt right.

Shun sighed, and straightened up, letting the bags on his arm slide back down into his hand. He whacked Sora softly on the knee with one of them.

“Hey, what was that for?” Sora said, jumping up with his hands in fists.

“Carry one of them,” Shun said. “They're heavy.”

“Why?” Sora said, looking at the bag against his chest with a scowl.

“Cause they're heavy, and if I'm going to feed you, you're going to pull your weight,” Shun said. “Ruri wants to make curry. We always have leftovers.”

“What am I, a stray you're picking up off the road?”

“Sure, if that's what you want to be. Do you want curry or not?”

Sora's stomach growled loudly just as Sora's mouth opened, probably to say he didn't want Shun's pity. The boy's face flushed.

“Well, I guess if _Ruri's_ making it,” Sora said, rolling his eyes. But he did take the bag from Shun.

“Why the qualifier?” said Shun suspiciously.

“Because if _you_ were making it, you'd probably poison me.”

“Don't tempt me.”

Sora just snorted, swinging the bag back and forth as he followed after Shun. Shun didn't quite look down at Sora as they moved back home, trying to think about how he was going to explain this to Ruri, but he thought, maybe...Sora's expression might have relaxed a little.

Shun couldn't offer Sora much of anything at all, and part of him didn't even want to try.

But...he supposed he could understand the pain of being without someplace to call home...

 


End file.
